The shortlist sees Crace, 67, become the oldest contender for the prestigious award with Harvest, a novel he has said would be his last.

His chance of victory with his fable about the enclosure of England’s common lands comes 16 years after he was shortlisted for Quarantine.

His biggest established rival is the twice previously shortlisted Colm Toibin with The Testament of Mary, the story of Jesus’s mother, which at about 100 pages is the shortest work in contention and has resurrected questions about whether it even constitutes a novel.

Zimbabwe-born NoViolet Bulawayo, 32, remains the sole debut writer on the list with We Need New Names, about life in a Zimbabwe shanty town, while New Zealander Eleanor Catton, 27, is the youngest for The Luminaries, an astrological murder mystery.

American-Canadian novelist Ruth Ozeki, 57, makes the final six with A Tale for the Time Being, a story about the way reading can connect two people who will never meet.

Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American, is also shortlisted for The Lowland, about two brothers coming of age in 1960s Calcutta. Writer Robert Mac-

farlane, chairman of the judges, said: “Global in its reach, this exceptional shortlist demonstrates the vitality and range of the contemporary novel at its finest. World-spanning in their concerns and ambitious in their techniques, they remind us of the possibilities and power of the novel as a form.”

Jon Howells, for Waterstones, said he thought the bookmakers could get it wrong this year with their prediction of Crace. “It’s five years since the last ‘surprise’ winner — The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga — and I think this shortlist gives the judges a lot of options. This is an impossibly tough year to call, but I will be placing a small bet on Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. I think it shares some of the spirit of Life of Pi, such a memorable winner in 2002, and I think it might be time for another surprise.”

Jonathan Ruppin, of Foyles, said there was a “pleasing diversity” to the shortlist but he thought judges would ultimately choose between Crace and Catton. Harvest was “the crowning achievement of Crace’s consistently outstanding career, while Catton is pushing the boundaries of what fiction can achieve,” he said.

Today’s list was whittled down from a longlist of 13 after a record 151 submissions. The winner will be announced in a Guildhall ceremony on October 15.